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Topic: Greetings from Rochester, NY (Read 6270 times)

In the 1960 era, my Asian studies began with Yoga and evolved into a profession. My interest in Japanese Gardening began in the 1970 era with Japanese Scroll paintings and Ukiyoe block art by Hiroshige. Locally, we are fortunate to have a premier Bonsai teacher(William Valvanis), who peaked my interest in Japanese Gardens.

In 1994 the opportunity arose to work with a 2 acre parcel to create an Asian theme that would harmonize our house with its surroundings.A local associate of David Slawson (Dennis Burns) helped in the first years correct my mistakes as the gardens evolved. Doug Roth of JOJG visited the gardens and helped me design a Kirasansui garden for viewing from the living room. Our area is blessed with a great supply of rocks, some as big as 3 tons and we have used many methods for installation into the gardens.

In 2000 the Oriental Garden Supply began business here in Rochester and it expanded our gardening pallete to include many specimen pines and maples.

In 1999 Dennis Burns, Bill Hart and I created a club called the Oriental Garden Society, which has currently 50 members locally. As a club we are responsible for the maintenance of a 100 year old Japanese garden, which is part of an estate called "Sonnenberg". My son and I are also responsible for a local Asian influenced garden in our town.

In 2006 my son and I built two Japanese style gardens, which was a milestone for me as I finally made more money than I spent on gardening!

Charles, your garden is wonderful, peaceful, work of art! Congratulation!

Rick,there are many-many wonderful art books, a recommend one for you, reasonable price, even used one from Amazon, " A Thousand Crane. -Treasures of Japanese Art by the Seattle Art Museum, or by Rathbun ( Curator). I like art-calendars, every year I buy different ones, this way I can see all year around the pictures. You can find huge variety. This year I have "Japanese Scrolls & Screen Paintings".

Don, I'm a pack-rat, keep them all! I can't throw out any printed material, except the newspaper and magazines. Every year I buy 4-6 calendars, one Japanese art, one of Robert Bateman( famous Canadian naturalist painter, I have all his books too.), one Inuit art or other art, one with frogs or other animals and maybe one Frank Lloyd Wright. No Firemen !

Andrea, have you heard of a Canadian artist named Ted Harrison? He married a Japanese girl and settled in Carcross Yukon. I have a copy of "Fuji San" which is a serigraph of Mount Fuji that he did in honour of his wife.